Yay! It works!

But first some back-story: The new TiVo unit arrived last Wednesday, so I put Rylee in her exer-saucer and promptly set up the TiVo. I stick in the CableCARDs, and OH NO, same error!

So I call up TiVo first. After a lengthy discussion recapping my experience so far, they give me a ticket number because noone has an answer, and it has to be escalated to the engineering dept. In the meantime, I have a TiVo that can’t watch TV.

I get a call back on Friday and speak directly with one of the engineers. Short answer: We have no idea. We’re willing to do another swap, but the chances of two boxes having the same issue is very minuscule. For now, I opt not to do another exchange and want to try to working the Verizon angle instead.

I’m on the phone with Verizon and get bounced from tech to tech, having to explain my problem to each one (lousy customer service). But finally I reach someone that apparently knows a thing or two about CableCARDs and TiVo. He concludes that it’s probably the CableCARDs themselves, because there is a high rate of failure in the CCs (great engineering on Motorola’s part, I guess). He wants to send someone out with more CCs. I was thinking I’d have to take another day off of work, but lo and behold, he has an appointment available Saturday! Unfortunately, that’s the extended Tanner family Christmas so no can do. But whaddayaknow, he has a Sunday appointment available too!

So the FIOS dude shows up Sunday with a bunch of CCs in hand. Suffice to say, it took five hours, but we finally found two CCs that work. Trial and error with the initialization and activation of cards was a slow process, but five hours after he arrived, we had both tuners working and able to watch all of the channels.

We’re a TiVo family again!

I’m thinking now that there was probably nothing wrong with the first TiVo unit and the exchange was completely unnecessary. The first Verizon dude just had a bunch of dud CCs. Oh well.